Strategic Workforce Planning

Workforce planning is the way in which organisations align business needs with the needs of the workforce, analyse current workforce supply and future demand and create workforce plans to bridge critical gaps and safeguard critical roles and/or people. Robust strategic workforce planning involves having a talent management strategy in place including a talent acquisition strategy to hire talent and redeploy employees, an employee engagement strategy to keep retention at the desired level, a talent development strategy to upskill the workforce and leaders and an implementation strategy for highly reliable succession planning.

• Workforce planning is focused on short-term initiatives and there is a lack of alignment between planning and business goals.
• Uncertainty about the right skillset in the organisation at present and for the future.
• The organisation is not staffed efficiently: it does not forecast its workforce needs or the supply of talent that is or will be available.
• Ambiguity of sourcing the talent needed to meet the risk of a possible shortfall.
• Lack of evidence-based approach in making decisions about workforce supply and demand.

• We help organisations to forecast and plan through conducting a systemic workforce assessment that highlights capacity and capability gaps and identifies whether the ‘Buy’ (recruitment) or ‘Build’ (train & develop) strategy is appropriate.
• In association with the business requirements for growth we identify the type of soft and hard skills, and the particular level, which are crucial to meet these needs.
• We integrate a systematic organisational process that encompasses proactive workforce planning to avoid talent and skills surpluses or shortages.
• We are able to use a Workforce Projection Model to identify capacity gaps. Proof of identified capability and capacity gaps helps determine where to focus training and skills development so that the right number of people with the right skills at the right levels are in place at the right time for the organisation to be successful.